The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has been revealed, appearing on the cover of the next issue of Game Informer.

The issue is available to digital subscribers now, ahead of the expected February 5 announcement CD Projekt RED teased in mid-January.

The head of CD Projekt RED, Adam Badowski, says that The Witcher 3 will release on, as Game Informer puts it, all top of the line consoles and PC in 2014. This seems to suggest The Witcher 3 will be looking beyond the current crop of consoles, especially as the magazine cites it as "a next generation RPG" on the cover.

According to Game Informer the open world in The Witcher 3 is 30 times larger than the previous game, which will make it even bigger than Skyrim.

Free expansion packs will release after the launch of Wild Hunt next year, akin to The Witcher 2's continuous, free post-release support.

Wild Hunt isn't broken up into acts, as the REDengine 3 permits the exploration of a vast, open-world without loading screen interruptions. Enemies won't scale to Geralt's level, though, so you can wander into territory filled with too-tough monsters who will wreck our intrepid hero. Along the way, you can expect to encounter friendlies and enemies in a dynamic world affected by unpredictable weather, including randomly generated storms, and water physics while sailing.

Fast travel is a go, and Geralt can mount horses for both transportation and combat.

Geralt will play the part of monster-hunter and detective throughout his quests, which developer CDP claims will occupy more than 100 hours of players' time. He'll have almost five times the amount of unique character animations, too.

Each new area of the game – Skellige, the metropolis of Novigrad, and "No Man's Land" – has its own story. Non-linear storytelling with branching paths dictates that avoiding the central plot of seeking out Geralt's lost love, Triss Merigold, will have ramifications.

In combat, you can interrupt attack animations to dodge or block, which depletes stamina. Dodging isn't a big somersault anymore, however – Geralt pivots to evade attacks while maintaining the momentum of a fight. Enemy AI has been retooled as well, and quick-time events are out entirely.

On February 1 CD Projekt RED announced it had a new version of the REDengine, unsurprisingly dubbed REDengine3, which was described as being created for, "RPGs set in vast, open worlds with improved tools for spanning truly non-linear stories that are based on real player choices and consequences.”

If you're unfamiliar with CD Projekt RED popular RPG, check out an introduction to the world of The Witcher here.

Early 2014 GOTY candidate no doubt!
CD Projekt RED = one of the best game developers. Makes badass games and doesnt charge consumers extra for future DLC updates

According to Game Informer the open world in The Witcher 3 is 30 times larger than the previous game, which will make it even bigger than Skyrim.

Free expansion packs will release after the launch of Wild Hunt next year, akin to The Witcher 2's continuous, free post-release support.

You have to love these guys. Every publisher in the world right now is trying to squeeze gamers for every penny. Numerous paid DLC's for every title (that usually are either terrible or straight up cut out of the game), pay-to-win is starting to become a trend, most games just offer a real questionable amount of content at a price point of sixty bucks.

Let's face it, the revenue on a decent selling game like The Witcher 2 runs well upwards of $100.000.000,-. They should be able to provide a good, complete package for that type of money. How come CD Projekt Red is virtually the only company in the business right now who is able to do this with success (besides Nintendo I guess)? Good for them.

CD Projekt RED has confirmed its open-world RPG will be DRM-free, the developer told Kotaku that the studio is trying to move away from DRM altogether.

“We are trying to get rid of DRM,” game designer Maciej Szczesnik said. “If someone wants to pirate a game, eventually he will.”

“Which is bad, of course,” managing director Adam Badowski added. “But you can’t do anything about it, so. We want to give the best user experience possible. When we removed DRM, people on those torrents were actually asking people not to download our game, because we weren’t using DRM.”

Gabe Newell once said that if you give people quality games, they will pay for it. It's certainly right in my case. I used to pirate almost everything. I still do for some games like buggy messes that need modding like Skyrim and the new Fallout games. But I've been buying more stuff on Steam than ever in the last 2 years.

Can't wait I tried Witcher 2 for the first time ever last year and I never played witcher 1 but it was amazing. So far from the details we've gotten so far it looks to continue that trend. I still can't believe the guy I got witcher 2 from traded it for my dota 2 key (which I have about 20+ now)